The 18-month legacy of the state's deputy budget director

Shortly before resigning as state deputy budget director, Art Pope disclosed that his family-owned company, Variety Wholesalers, plans to open a grocery store in what used to be a Kroger on Martin Luther King Boulevard in Southeast Raleigh. Pope, the Republican financier and the man most responsible for turning state government into a right-wing demolition derby, told The News & Observer that the store, half-Roses, half-grocery, will be a new model for his discount chain. "It is a way to serve our community," Pope said.

Coincidentally, Pope's plans were front-page news three days before the launch of the Fertile Ground Food Cooperative in Southeast Raleigh on what sponsors called "Economic Independence Day."

Fertile Ground is a perfect solution if it gets off the ground, but that's a big if. Pope's store is an easy answer, but possibly the worst one, given Pope's track record in politics and business. Pope's trickle-down methods fully justify the bitter response from one Fertile Ground organizer. "We should not participate in our oppression," Erin Byrd wrote. "No way, no how, any Negro who understands who Art Pope is should support his efforts to profit off the back of our folks in Southeast Raleigh."

Let me disclose that, after writing about Fertile Ground in July, I paid $100 and, though I live in West Raleigh, I am now a member of the little cooperative that could. Everything about it appeals to me, from its purposes to the people hoping to create a community- and worker-owned grocery quite unlike anything Art Pope has ever done.

And yet, I try to be pragmatic, a word Pope uses about himself. Fertile Ground has community connections but is far short of the capital needed to open a grocery store.

Pope has capital—Variety Wholesalers bought the Kroger for $2.57 million. Pope wants to serve "our" community. Why not put him to the test?

When the co-op members meet next, I'm going to propose that we reach out to Pope to see whether we might work together to achieve something remarkable: A business that both "creates pathways to living-wage jobs, increases access to healthy and affordable food and fosters collective ownership"—Fertile Ground's goals—and also makes money for him.

McCrory announced that Medicaid was "broken" and he would fix things by putting for-profit management firms in charge. But that idea has failed in every state where it's been tried; belatedly, McCrory or Pope wised up to the fact that the provider-run system of Medicaid management already in place in North Carolina was a national model.

Unfortunately, too many Republican legislators believed the hokum about Medicaid fed them for so long by Pope's groups. Now, they're holding out for really wrecking Medicaid because it's "welfare"—to the point that Pope himself had to warn a legislative committee not to cut the aged, blind, poor and persons with disabilities from the rolls.

Moderation? Maybe in comparison to some tea-party crazies elected in districts so armor-plated by gerrymandering that no Democrat or even moderate Republican can ever win them. Their perpetual election results are on Pope.

Also on Pope is the McCrory record of slashing government programs for the poor and people in need, which include the deepest cuts to unemployment benefits in the country for people who've lost their jobs. Also, McCrory—and Pope—eliminated the earned-income tax credit that functioned as a modest, but helpful, supplement to the pay of low-wage workers.

They cut $9 million from after-school programs for "at-risk" kids. They cut university funding, and their appointees want financial aid to UNC students capped as tuitions rise.

Worst of all, these trickle-down measures haven't resulted in a "Carolina Comeback" of the jobs lost during the recession, as much as McCrory and Pope want us to think otherwise. Even Pope, the numbers nerd, must see that.

In Raleigh—downtown and in Southeast—a host of foodie groups could work with Pope to supply healthy produce, sell it at his store, send him customers and even work for him if he'll learn to share and embrace a sustainable, community-minded approach to business.

Unlike what he's done in politics.

This article appeared in print with the headline "Art Pope: We want our money back"